Month: June 2010

Major Garrett, senior White House correspondent for Fox News, was tweeting the president’s town hall on Wednesday when this came through from him at 1:59 p.m. CT:

RT @c…….: why even listen to this a–hole. he should be impeached and then tried for treason//Warning. No profanity of that kind. [Dashes not in original tweet; user name withheld.]

A minute later came this tweet from Garrett:

To all followers….if you use profanity against POTUS or other followers or are abusive to me or anyone, you will be blocked. No appeal.

Which was weird, because Garrett had just retweeted such. But then came this another minute later.

Did not mean to retweet that earlier tweet to me…it was errant. Hence the across-the-board warning to everyone.

And, four minutes later:

Everyone. That retweet was a mistake. I hit send before I edited it as I did. This is a sane, civil place. As long-time followers know.

It’s a simple mistake (how many times have you hit the send key when you didn’t mean to?), but it helped me seeing someone else have to dig themselves out of a hole they themselves dug. I’ve had to do it plenty of times in my life, just by saying something that I shouldn’t have and then over-explaining it or overapologizing for it. It’s even rougher if you’re a reporter at a major news outlet with 18,536 18,534 followers on Twitter. (The drop there occurred between the first and second tweets.)

Update, 2:27 p.m. CT: Tweet from MajoratWH:

RT @c9758langwaters i dont think that was a mistake by you retweeting that. otherwise you would just delete it?/ I DID delete it.

Like this:

Here I warned that we should all assume that anything we send in e-mail, leave in voice mail, etc., will end up on the front page of the paper, because sometimes it does.

Now comes the resignation of Washington Post reporter/blogger Dave Weigel after some e-mails he sent to a group of journalists were exposed.

FishbowlDC has confirmed that WaPo conservative-beat blogger Dave Weigel has resigned after a slew of his anti-conservative comments and emails surfaced on FishbowlDC and Daily Caller over the past two days.

Like this:

I’ve been mostly–all right, totally–negative about Barack Obama as president, leader, politician, whathaveyou. But at first blush, he handled the Gen. McChrystal controversy perfectly, and gave solid reasons for removing him from command: civilian over military rule; the impact of divisiveness within the chain of command. He treated McChrystal with respect, as well.

On the other hand, per John Derbyshire, we need to get our buns out of Afghanistan and devote resources instead to protection here.

Like this:

After last night’s joke speech, the Left is finally waking up to the fact that Barack Obama is incompetent, an empty suit. Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show (recorded before the speech), pointed out something more onerous.

Like this:

This cuts to the heart of the problem in politics today. Ideological politics doesn’t work. It has to be adapted to the needs of both the moment and the future, even if you’re a free-market guy like me.

You can’t be a slave to ideology, or you soon lose a grasp on reality.

“As Democrats, we believe that we must stand tall for what we believe ideologically,” said Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver D-Essex.